Der Sparse Bundle Trick - obsolete by now?

In my scenario I want to use an external harddrive connected to my linux server. Because the disk
shall be used for other data too it is a good idea to limit the size of Time Machine's backup. This
is done by creating a sparse bundle image with OSX's disk utility and copy it over to the external
harddrive. Sparse bundle is an image which expands as it is filled with data. For that we need to
know the name of the client and the MAC address:

hostname -s

to get the short hostname and even if your client is connected via Wifi, like mine, you need the
MAC address from the ethernet interface:

ifconfig en0 | grep ether

Concatenate these two informations with an underscore, such as "name_XXXXXXXXXXXX" and you'll
get the sparse bundle's filename.

Next task is to copy the newly created sparse bundle to your backup disk. Start system settings
of Time Machine, point it to your afp share on the server and your initial backup should be on the
way. The existing sparse bundle with its long name is going to be renamed to
Hostname.sparsebundle.